Vestas Wind Systems, which has plants in Windsor, Brighton and Pueblo, announced Thursday its largest wind-turbine order in three years: 400 megawatts for two Texas wind farms.

The wind farms are being built in south Texas by Duke Energy, the country's largest utility operator. The order is the largest globally since 2010 for Aarhus, Denmark-based Vestas.

"This order will keep our U.S. factories busy," Chris Brown, president of Vestas' U.S. and Canada sales division, said in an interview.

The Duke wind farms — producing the power to service 120,000 households — will use Vestas' new V110-2.0 turbines, which are being made in the U.S.

"This is a competitive, new product," Brown said. "We already have two years of work."

A worker is seen through hub castings ready for assembly at the Vestas Wind Systems plant in Brighton. The company has blade factories in Windsor and Brighton; a nacelles, or casing, plant in Brighton; and a tower factory in Pueblo. (Kathryn Scott Osler, Denver Post file)

Vestas has booked 870 megawatts in orders in 2013 and will announce more projects before the end of the year, Brown said. Vestas' record sales year was 2010, with 1,880 megawatts of projects.

The company has a blade factory in each of Windsor and Brighton; a nacelles, or casing, plant in Brighton; and a tower factory in Pueblo.

When the federal wind-production tax credit — worth $22 for every megawatt a new wind farm generates — expired at the end of 2012, the market for turbines dropped sharply, and Vestas cut its Colorado workforce from 1,700 to about 1,000 in February.

Vestas has more than 1,200 employees, the company said.

The tax credit, or PTC, was restored in March, and orders began to pick up, Brown said.

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"It is always good news when one of your major employers gets busy," said Eric Berg-lund, chief executive of Upstate Colorado Economic Development. "But it isn't just Vestas; suppliers will also have to step up and possibly hire people."

In 2010, wind-industry suppliers and support facilities accounted for 1,300 Colorado jobs, according to the American Wind Energy Association.